Ugh aka SpongeBob B.C. (Before Comedy)
Original air date: 3/5/2004 (produced in 2002; first aired in Canada on 11/5/02)
A look into the prehistoric life of Bikini Bottom, following the misadventures of SpongeGar, Patar, and Squog as they discover fire.
"Ugh" contains examples of:
- Achievements in Ignorance: Squog immediately feels the pain and pulls back when he touches the fire. SpongeGar and Patar take a little longer.
- Adaptational Nice Guy: Downplayed with Squog. While he's relatively friendlier to his obnoxious neighbors than his descendant, he still is visibly annoyed by SpongeGar's pet (a huge ancestor of Gary) leaving trails of slime wherever he goes and also goes out of his way to steal the fire from SpongeGar and Patar. He also blames them for the fire running out and tries to beat them with his club before a bolt of lightning zaps him.
- Anachronism Stew: A pod of prehistoric whales (named in SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake as a Dorudon) exists alongside Pterosaurs and Ammonites.
- All Cavemen Were Neanderthals: This episode depicts prehistoric versions of SpongeBob and Patrick, with the prehistoric starfish larger than his modern counterpart but the prehistoric sponge being more primitive but not physically much different than SpongeBob. Squog (Squidward's ancestor) isn't much different than his modern counterpart except in language use. Then they discover fire... underwater.
- All Flyers Are Birds: Patchy makes a pterosaur costume for Potty, presumably under the logic that a pterosaur would be the prehistoric equivalent to a bird.
- Balloon Belly: After spending the entire day cooking and eating everything in sight, SpongeGar, Patar and Squog all wind up lying around the fire with massive, bloated stomachs.
- Big Eater: After seeing how useful fire is for cooking, SpongeGar, Patar and Squog spend a good chunk of the episode making a meal out of anything they can find.
- Breaking Old Trends: This is the first double-length episode where Sandy and Plankton are absent.
- The Cameo:
- A small, prehistoric counterpart of Mr. Krabs makes a cameo before SpongeGar proceeds to step on him, cook him and eat him. (And a bunch more hiding under a rock.)
- Patrick's voice actor Bill Fagerbakke plays the live-action role of Cavey the caveman.
- "Cavemen vs. Astronauts" Debate: Taken quite literally between Patchy and Potty. Patchy thinks prehistory is better, while Potty prefers the future. At one point Patchy thaws out a caveman named Cavey, while Potty uses a time machine to retrieve the X-29488, a robot from the future, who scares Cavey. Eventually, both Cavey and X-29488 become friends and do a rap number together.
- Clapper Gag: At one point, SpongeGar and Patar keep clapping repeatedly and turn the rain on and off, until they do it one time too many and it doesn't stop.
- Continuity Nod: Prehistoric versions of SpongeBob and Patrick first appeared in "SB-129", albeit they were more primitive than the ones seen here.
- Creative Closing Credits: Fitting the rest of the special, the closing credits and ending theme are done in a prehistoric style.
- Dire Beast: Prehistoric Gary is a giant, dinosaur-like snail.
- The Discovery of Fire: The special is about SpongeGar, Patar, and Squog discovering fire. Underwater.
- Eat Dirt, Cheap: Our three protagonists have no problem cooking and eating rocks, sand and dirt.
- Extreme Omnivore: SpongeGar, Patar and Squog gleefully cook and eat pretty much anything around them, from edible matter to even stones (which pop like popcorn), Krabby Patties made out of sand, and wood.
- Eye Pop: Patchy when he's "thrilled" to see that Potty got him a Tyrannosaurus rex as a present.
- Fantastic Fauna Counterpart:
- Invoked by Patchy making a pterosaur costume for Potty — while pterosaurs and birds aren't closely related, pterosaurs did fill many of the same ecological niches as birds, so Potty having a pterosaur as his "prehistoric" equivalent works. Defied by Potty himself, who refuses to wear the costume.
- The clams often seen on the title cards are replaced by trilobites in the prehistoric version.
- Flintstone Theming: The gimmick of the whole cartoon. For example, Spongebob's iconic fog horn alarm is now a noise made by prehistoric cetaceans and Krabby Patties are clumps of sand pulled from the ground which vaguely resemble hamburgers.
- Fun with Acronyms: The B.C. in the special's name stands for "Before Comedy".
- Human Popsicle: Cavey the live-action caveman was this until Patchy thawed him out with his mom's hairdryer.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Exaggerated with the X-29488 and Cavey in the live action segments. X-29488 was taken from the future through a time machine and Cavey was frozen in ice until Patchy thawed him out. Initially, they don't get along too well, but by the episode's end they get along just fine and even break out into song for their newfound friendship.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Potty isn't wrong when he repeatedly insists that the future is what Patchy should be focusing on, something SpongeBob unwittingly agrees with.
- Left the Background Music On: As SpongeGar gets the idea to use fire to cook, a chorus plays in the background. As the camera cuts repeatedly from SpongeGar to the fire to the cooked coral, there is a brief cut of a live-action barbershop quartet singing the chorus.
- Major Injury Underreaction: After Squog is struck by lightning, his only response is to mutter weakly, "Tabonga doo."
- My Significance Sense Is Tingling: While Patchy and Potty argue, back in Bikini Bottom, SpongeBob senses that somewhere a pirate and a parrot are arguing... and the parrot is winning.
- One-Word Vocabulary: The prehistoric ancestors of Mr. Krabs can only say "Money".
- Out of Focus: Excluding his prehistoric counterpart, SpongeBob has no major role in this episode, as he only appears in a brief scene at the Krusty Krab in which he informs Mr. Krabs that he has the feeling that a pirate and parrot are arguing and the parrot is winning.
- Overly Long Gag: SpongeGar taking almost a minute to realize he can use Squog's stick to get the flowers out of the fire, cutting between SpongeGar's face, the stick, and the fire (and a barbershop quartet), getting progressively faster and faster until it reaches Epileptic Flashing Lights territory.
- Pass the Popcorn: Potty does this (plus a soda) while watching his robot fight Patchy's caveman, and then watching the Tyrannosaurus rex he got for Patchy as a "present" chase after and eat Patchy.
- Pet the Dog: At the end of the special, Potty decides to strike a compromise with Patchy by showing how both the future and the past can be cool.
- Precision F-Strike: Very surprisingly, after the fire is extinguished by the rain, Squog pulls out a club and angrily says "sutaka jakasa", which sounds completely like it means "you jackasses".
- Say My Name: Patchy screams, "POTTY!!" twice for ruining his caveman show with the robot, and then for siccing a Tyrannosaurus rex on him to get eaten.
- Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: Instead of burping, Squog simply says "barpa".
- Shout-Out:
- The chanting and famous music from 2001: A Space Odyssey is parodied when SpongeGar realizes that he can use fire to cook food.
- A guy living in Encino, California thaws out a caveman.
- Significant Double Casting: Tom Kenny (who voices SpongeBob) and Bill Fagerbakke (who voices Patrick) play the Robot and the Caveman respectively.
- Stock Footage: The opening shots of prehistoric Bikini Bottom are taken from "SB-129". The "When Worlds Collide" song also uses a few scenes of the future and even one of the different SpongeBob and Patrick ancestors.
- Studded Shell: Gary's prehistoric ancestor is depicted as having spikes on his shell, giving him a more dinosaur-like appearance.
- Trip Trap: When SpongeGar, Patar and Squog are fighting over the burning log, Squog trips an unknowing Patar on the run with his legs while hiding in the bushes.
- The Unintelligible: SpongeGar, Patar and Squog speak in a primitive caveman language, except for SpongeGar saying the word ready and when Squog says "Wait a minute..."
